Eliminating the blind spot behind cars
This Holy Week as thousands of motorists hit the road, safety is uppermost in their minds. Safely reaching one’s destination is given much thought, it’s true, but some attention should also be given to minor details like maneuvering and backing up on driveways and parking lots without injuring or killing anyone.
In the United States, where KidsAndCars.org reported that two children die and about 50 are injured every week when someone backs over them accidentally in a vehicle, the importance of eliminating the wide blind spot behind a car has gained traction partially because in two thirds of the time, a parent or other close relative is driving the vehicle. Now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing a mandate requiring car manufacturers to install a rearview camera in all passenger vehicles by 2014, according to a Reuters news feature.
A drastic regulation mandating rearview cameras in cars is unlikely to be proposed in our country, where children below 5, the most vulnerable victims in back-over accidents, are watched over by domestic helpers called yayas. What’s more, over here, airbags and the third, high-mounted brake light are not even required as standard safety equipment like they are in the US.
Cost. Although the rearview camera proposal hasn’t been sent to the US Congress yet, the cost to the auto industry of adding cameras and viewing screens has already been estimated at $2.7 billion a year or $160 to $200 per vehicle, the Reuters article says. Naturally, some of the cost will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher retail prices for cars.
Car makers began offering backup cameras only about 10 years ago, using the in-dash navigation screens in luxury models. As companies found more inexpensive ways to display camera images to a driver, like on a screen hidden in the rearview mirror, the safety feature became more popular. Edmunds.com, the automotive research firm, says that for the 2012 model year, 45 percent of vehicles sold in the US have a rearview camera as standard equipment while it is offered as an option on 23 percent of models.
KidsAndCars.org and other safety advocates contend that a mandatory camera was long overdue. You wouldn’t buy a car if you couldn’t see 30 or 40 feet driving forward, the founder of KidsAndCars.org pointed out, but “we’re taking this big lethal weapon going in reverse, and we can’t see.” In a public service announcement urging Congress to help reduce back-over injuries, the organization showed that 61 children could fit behind a large SUV without being visible to the driver in any of the mirrors.
Bigger.Dan Edmunds, the director of vehicle testing at Edmunds.com, noted that as vehicles have become bigger and designed to protect occupants better, drivers’ ability to see any people or objects behind them have been reduced, the Reuters news feature reported. Edmunds said that over time, in the interest of safety, the belt lines have risen and the glass has become a little smaller, but visibility hasn’t necessarily been given a lot of attention.
Although many back-over accidents involve SUVs and trucks, Edmunds said that some of the biggest blind spots are on cars whose trunk has a high lid and the driver sits low to the ground. Edmunds.com measures the size of the blind spot behind a vehicle based on how far back the driver can see a mannequin designed to resemble a small child. For minivans from Toyota and Honda, Edmunds.com measured a blind spot about 40 feet long while for the Cadillac CTS-V coupe, it was 101 feet long.
The US Association of Automobile Manufacturers expressed support for efforts to increase the field of view for vehicles, although some automakers took issue with technical aspects of the proposal and the added cost. In anticipation of the 2014 mandate, many manufacturers have made the rearview camera standard equipment (e.g., the 2012 Honda Civic) or an option for a few hundred dollars instead of including it in a $2,000 navigation package.
Safety regulators studied other ways of improving rear visibility, including the beeping radar-based sensors that many vehicles (e.g., the 2012 Hyundai Elantra GLS) already offer. But they found that the sensors often did not detect moving people, especially children and that drivers responded better to the camera image than to the audio alerts, the Reuters article concluded.
Today’s Bumper Sticker: Faith sees things that are out of sight.
